Feed a Fever, Starve a Wallet

According to my experience, the only things children share without being threatened are asparagus, blame for painting the refrigerator, and the chicken pox.

I think my kids plan their sick days at the beginning of the school year according to when major projects and compositions are due or when there is a day I’ll have a schedule that’s tight enough to be shrink wrapped. On awards day, they tally up their doctor visits and the one who has the most sick days gets to hang on the refrigerator door and ask what’s for supper every ten seconds until I get that thumpy vein in my neck and we all go out for pizza.

My kids are so adept at trips to the doctor, the Olympic committee is considering accepting flu-spreading as a winter sport. Their record is six office visits in a week, but that takes conditioning and discipline, so they can’t do it every time. Besides, my two boys aim for less conventional fare than mere strains of bacteria can provide. The Adventure of the Invisible Glass Sliver and the Mistaken X-Ray comes to mind. When that doctor finally fished the dainty dagger of glass out of the swollen, bloody foot (no I can’t make him wear shoes in the house, not for all the Frosted Flakes in Battle Creek), the best part was being able to say “I Told You So” to a man whose car costs more than the yearly junk food bill for my teenagers. Twelve months of Twinkies and Yoo Hoos can add up.

I know a mother with three young daughters who runs a regular route to the doctor every Friday at closing time. She figures if nobody’s sick at that particular moment, strep throat will set in just as the clock strikes five and the doctor loads his briefcase full of communicable diseases into the Lexus sports car for the trip home. This same Mom qualified for the Employee of the Month parking spot at the doctor’s office and is in line for a punch card that will give her a free visit after ten minor emergencies. With her record, she’ll be cashing in a full ticket before grocery day rolls around. She’s wondering if she will qualify for a retirement package once her kids are grown.

And why can’t a family of children all come down with the flu or a nice case of mumps at the same time? Instead, they carefully plan a timeline of late nights and weekends at least two days apart. It’s not that they’re not all sick at the same time. At any given point during the winter months at least 50% of the kids in my carpool (with an incidence rate that escalates to 85% the day before a science project is due) are suffering from various forms of diseases that gives them an intestinal discrepancy, runny nose, and makes them sneeze on the baby.

But they don’t start out that way. By prearranged plan, they space out the onset of their illnesses over two day increments, thereby increasing the trips to the doctor and the chance to see Mommy make the “co-payment” face. I’m convinced the children have a betting pool with all wagered candy bars going to the kid that gets the best noises out of Mommy when they wander into the kitchen, teddy bear in tow, and announce forlornly “My tummy hurts.” They probably get bonus points if Mommy’s face changes color, she makes audible strangled retching sounds, or Daddy has to administer cold packs and CPR.

Now that it’s fall and sinus infections are just around the speed dial, Saturday mornings will inevitably find me with a thermometer in someone’s ear, dialing the doctor’s office during weekend emergency hours while checking furtively for swollen lymph nodes. Faster than you can say “Refinance the mortgage” his neck swells up like a jumbo marshmallow over an open flame, and the lining of his throat boasts enough spots for a dice game.

But I’m not a new face in the fever fighting lineup. I know that with time, tender care, and terrific insurance we’ll all make it through the flu season.

Just in time to start treating spring allergies.

These cold & flu germs first found a home in the Sept./Oct. issue of The Wham Magazine.

Making Tracks

It wasn’t so hard to recycle when the boys were small. It really wasn’t any trouble to toss the glass juice bottles in one bin and the pamphlets for weight loss programs I’d decided not to try in another. But now that they’re big enough to leave six month old soda cans in places I can’t reach, the job is a little tougher.

My first instinct was to don a HazMat suit and spray their room with that industrial strength foam OSHA recommends for cleaning up chemical spills. However, I decided that this wasn’t the example I wanted to set. First of all they’d both want to be the next to wear the suit and the first to spray their brother. I decided on another tactic: put them in charge, a course of action that usually ranks second behind, say, shaving my legs with fire. But I'm trying to pull myself out of the dot matrix printer age and get in step with the times.

Son Number Two, Destructo the Younger, flattens cardboard boxes and maintains order in the mixed paper box. Each warlord, er, boy, gets to enforce the rules governing his domain. (By royal decree, crushed cans go in the Christmas coffee can painted like a Gingerbread Man and flattened boxes go upright in their own tall kitchen trash can--I guess vertical is the new green.)

I let the oldest son, Destructo Senior, be in charge of can smashing. There’s not a piece of recyclable aluminum in the tri-state area that’s safe when he embarks on a tour for additions to fill the Gingerbread Man. From what I can see of the soda containers, our family is responsible for the financial success of not only the Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola companies but many of their lesser known relatives and stalkers. If there's a bubble in the can, somebody in my house is going to pop the top and drink until the last drop of artificial flavoring is gone.

So, from what I can tell, we’re doing well on the recycling. But it sure looks like we’re leaving one heckuva carbonated footprint.

My Car and Welcome to It

I was almost robbed once. The burglar mistook my vehicle for a real car. I would have been embarrassed if I hadn’t been so busy being depressed that he didn’t get away with it.

Although I consider myself fortunate to have a means of transportation that is the same in purpose, if not in scope as that of Britney’s Mercedes, I couldn’t help feeling slighted and somewhat downtrodden. The thief, apparently Smarter Than a Fifth Grader on a Nascar scholarship, abandoned my car, complete with key in the ignition and my old Reese Cup wrappers and empty YooHoo cans in the floorboard at the end of the driveway. My driveway. He only got as far as the mailbox. He didn’t even have the decency to leave a note promising to try harder the next time.

It’s easier to forget that emergency tonsillectomy when you were ten than to forget your first car. The wishy-washy window that wouldn’t make a decision—was it stuck halfway up or halfway down? The gearshift that only shifted with the aid of a handy pair of needlenose pliers. The windshield wiper that didn’t wipe, just sort of meandered across the windshield like the Mississippi River on noncommittal trip to the Gulf.

My first car didn’t actually belong to me, but I had squatter’s rights. It was important to squat just in case one of the minor functions, such as braking or steering, either of which was subject to a moral failure of responsibility, refused to answer to repeatedly hysterical demands and I needed to execute an emergency exit through the small gap where the window used to open.

The Green Demon I called it, and it guzzled gas and followed with an oil chaser like it was whiskey and soda. A chronic gastrointestinal disturbance caused it to spew plumes of white smoke whenever I happened to make a successful start off the line at stoplights.

But because my Daddy had the magic touch to coerce miles out of that malfunctioning motor, that car got me through college and landed me successfully in the right place on graduation day. That crazy car was just the first in a long line of little engines that couldn’t.

But isn't it always the bad relationships that make the best memories? I'll check with Britney on that.